


Men Who Follow Spring

by randomalia (spilinski)



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Epilepsy, Growing Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 10:43:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4218714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilinski/pseuds/randomalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heroes were made in the Navy, and hot-blooded glory which lived for ever; it was this which made his heart quicken. He wrote his letters home with careless duty and a growing frustration, for there were things that could not be communicated via quill and ink, and Archie knew himself to be no playwright. At times the cheer that would be expected deserted him. At times there were no words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Men Who Follow Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Set prior to The Even Chance.

Simpson has him face-down on the table, his hips jutting out into the shadows and his hands gripping with a bone-deep ache against the wood. When he is allowed to rise there will be skin missing from his cheek, sheared along his cheekbone; it will be rough and red for days, a signal that will cause the officers to sweep their eyes away, turning as they would from an unexpected glimpse of a woman's body.

He can smell the old oil used on the surface, the ghosts of salted beef and rum, and the ripe cloy of another man's sweat. Of Simpson, whose hands are shoving at his naked hips, pushing his neck down, pushing Archie apart in ways that make his eyes water.

Behind everything is the scent of the sea.

Archie has chipped memories of his father's old gillie, cantankerous MacUlric who had a croft on the back knock and purportedly slept with a musket in hand. MacUlric had slow eyes that would gaze at you overlong and quick hands, deft, gnarled and scarred with black crusts of blood under the nails. Every Spring, when the Kennedy family travelled from London for the season, Archie would see him: the familiar steady gait around the great house, sometimes in to the woods, sometimes out with the limp body of a slender deer or a huddle of rabbits, musket hanging over his curved shoulder. Archie's father would follow him at length, smiling, pleased with the day's sport and keen to regale his children with tales of the daring hunt.

Those seasons seemed often bright and brief, the mist burning off early and leaving a sweet sheen on the surface of the loch until the fall of dusk. Archie would go swimming, enamored of the vast landscape and powerful silence of the hills, the give of mud beneath his toes, even the humming haze of insects that floated above the water. The loch was another world, and the furthest Archie could get from the house; when he dived under and looked up, the sun was a shimmering blue beacon. He spent hours dipping and surfacing, following the sinuous trails of murky water plants and looking for fantastical creatures: a mighty Poseidon, calculating merfolk, forgotten relics from stories and songs.

Some days old MacUlric would watch him from the bank, charged to ensure the youngest son got neither lost nor drowned on his travels. He never spoke, never seemed to be paying attention to anything but what his hands were doing -- fixing, tying, cleaning -- but even in the empty spread of the highlands the weight of his gaze rested close and narrow on Archie's skin.

At fifteen Archie decided upon the Navy, and later, his father's gillie became a solemn post-script in one of his sister's letters. By then a love had grown in Archie: the unanswerable ocean, the possibility upon the distant, circling horizon. The sparse drum of the wind filling sails swelled also beneath his ribs. The loch had been fit for a child, he realised now, and the sea drew him on as a man -- here he could go further, climb up into the air and hear the unfettered passage of the striking bells. Heroes were made in the Navy, and hot-blooded glory which lived for ever; it was this which made his heart quicken. He wrote his letters home with careless duty and a growing frustration, for there were things that could not be communicated via quill and ink, and Archie knew himself to be no playwright. At times the cheer that would be expected deserted him. At times there were no words.

Simpson has gone still. Apart from his hands, which now start moving with a new deliberation. He's running his thumbs up along the sides of Archie's spine, up and then down, a slow slide upwards, slow trail down. A shivering flares in Archie's legs, hot-poker cramps stutter in his belly, and the air he's struggling to pull into his mouth is stale and sickly. The closest sound is breathing, not his. Footsteps elsewhere in the dark 'tweendecks. The press of air on the exposed side of his face.

"Knew you could be agreeable, boy," Simpson is murmuring. "And now you'll remember, won't you? You'll know your place." He almost laughs and bends forward to puncture the space between them. "Beneath Jack Simpson, with your legs spread."

The lantern is casting slate shadows along the wall as the _Justinian_ rolls on the shifting sea. Archie watches the movement, thinking of the ship, thinking of the light caught in sparks of water when he surfaced in the loch. He hardly knows when Simpson leaves.

When he wakes it's to the sight of woodgrain and a white row of hammocks, and the clear ringing of the bell.

*


End file.
